Hideo Hagiwara was born in K˘fu City (Yamanishi Prefecture). Between 1921 and 1929 he lived in Korea and Manchuria. He studied at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, where he graduated at the Oil Painting Section in 1938. While still there he attended Un'ichi Hiratsuka's extracurricular woodblock printing course, and in the same year he became quality controller at the Takamizawa Woodblock Print Company. He was conscripted into the army in 1943. In 1945 he had lost his house, his atelier and nearly all his early works. Around 1950 he had sufficiently recovered to start painting again. At the same time he started making S˘saku Hanga, both figurative and abstract prints. He was known as a constant innovator and he is generally considered one of the best post-WWII Sosaku Hanga artists.